he stared at his blank canvas for hours.

frustrated.

couldn’t get a thing done.

finally he just doused his naked body with flat green house paint

and in a magic-mushroomed fog

threw himself against the elevator lift.

he picked himself up off the floor.

stepped back.  stared.  hmmm.

it was this perfectly contoured jade silhouette of his body

divided in sublime harmony and symmetry

right between two testicles by the parting of the

double steel doors.

from that day forth every time he yanked on the ropes and opened that thing to leave

he’d flash on the excruciating image of his

right nut soaring one way and his

left nut soaring the other.

was there a symbolic message somewhere in that image, he wondered?

that maybe castration was the true doorway to freedom?

as many women as there were who had messed with his head and therefore his art

he had to at least consider the possibility.

he got the hell outta there for the night and went to a neighborhood bar.

walked in and saw the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

kinda like an angel.

reminded him o’ that old joke :

 

man walks into a bar.  sees the beautiful woman.

tells her he wants to make sweet love to her.

Sorry i can’t, she quips, i’m on my blue period!

 

he downed a couple of quick shots of Old Forester.

slapped his money on the bar like a cowboy.

decided against approaching his beautiful woman.

and sulked on back home.

thought to himself :

 

why’d that damned Vincent have to go and cut his ear off,

and raise the bar of brilliant suffering for all the rest of us?

 

 

 

 

 

Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD.   Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog.   Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.